The attack Tuesday on a group of Maine soldiers prompted our two U.S. senators to issue a flurry of news releases.

The same sentiments are expressed each time a soldier is killed or wounded. The senators express their concern, give their unyielding support, and note that their thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families.

In fact, Sen. Susan Collins has been waging a well-publicized effort, on her part, to get a military police unit from Maine back home. The 94th Military Police Unit has twice had its stay in Iraq extended, the last time only hours before they were set to fly home.

What the senators are failing to say, however, in their press releases is that they have contributed to the situation that our soldiers are facing.

Both senators Collins and Olympia Snowe voted to allow the president to launch a war against Iraq. Both have remained relatively silent on the string of revelations that President George W. Bush had his sights set on a war in Iraq as soon as he took office in January 2001.

The evidence is mounting that not only did Saddam Hussein not pose an imminent threat to the United States and had no role whatsoever in the terrorist attacks on our country, but that the president and his military leaders knew that before we invaded Iraq.

The president has used the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001 to achieve his goal of ousting Hussein. The price for reaching that goal, however, are the lives of hundreds of U.S. soldiers.

If the country had been given the truth before the war was launched, public opinion would likely have not backed such a mission.

Our senators point out their unyielding support for the troops in words but not in action.

At what point will our leaders say that our invasion of a country that was not threatening us was wrong? At what point will they pledge to get our soldiers home as soon as possible?

The president says that to leave now would be to surrender to terrorists. Many people might question his credibility in the wake of the revelations by his former treasury secretary, his former chief counter-terrorism expert and the work of journalist Bob Woodward.

In Vietnam, President Richard Nixon kept our troops fighting for an additional four years to achieve a peace with honor. In the end, we got neither. The cost of those four years of trying to save face was the lives of many thousands of Americans.

Will our leaders learn from history? Will they understand that press releases, yellow ribbons and patriotic comments will not protect the lives of our soldiers?

The most important decision, by far, that a country can make is to go to war. The mostly middle-aged, financially secure, white political leaders who send young people to war make their decisions for political reasons.

Even Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry doesn't have the guts to admit the war in Iraq was a mistake. He commented this week that how the president went to war was a mistake.

Kerry voted for the war but has since blamed the Bush administration for not being honest.

Why is it so difficult for Congress to admit it failed to do its job when it gave the president a blank check to wage war against a country which had not attacked us and was not planning to attack us?

How many more press releases stating condolences will have to be issued? How many more lives will be destroyed? How many more families will have to grieve before the mistake is corrected?

Stephen Betts is news editor. He can be reached at: sbetts@courierpub.com

Copyright © 2004 Courier-Gazette

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